'year Sets' That Really Aren't

Here's a paste of a message I sent an ebay vendor this week:

,Hi was this supposed to be a complete year set? It looks to be missing over twenty stamps, including at least three longer sets. Thanks. . .,

Reply:

,Good day, thanks for your message. No it was not listed as complete. Listed as "1966 YEAR SET of 58 STAMPS and 1 S/S Mint NH OG" and as scanned. I hope this helps.
Kind Regard,

This was a 1966 collection of Czech stamps pricd at $25. I suppose I have no kick coming, he did use a scan showing what was in it but based on the higher than usual price and the fact it was listed as a 'set' I just assumed a greater degree of completion than this. Yes it was my responsibility to carefully look over his scan I suppose. I'm not pushing this further other than to think twice about biding on his lots in the future. To me, the word 'year set' does not mean an assortment of stamps from a given year that is missing up to a quarter of the stamps for that year. Probably it's me, I guess. Live and learn..

I expect that the seller's intention was to convey that all stamps in the lot were from 1966, in which case a better title probably would have been "1966 Partial YEAR SET of 58 STAMPS and 1 S/S Mint NH OG" but he did include the count of stamps and a scan so I wouldn't think the intention was to be deceptive.

When ever I purchase what I expect to be a full set of any kind I always check the scan against the catalogue to be sure that the seller hasn't conveniently "forgotten" to include some high cat items.
Clive

To me a year set means a complete set of that particular year's issues.

I would return the "set". The lot is misleading, perhaps intentionally so.

To me the term 'set' more or less implies some degree of completeness. A lot of these year sets have some items missing of course. The percentage on this item was just a bit much. This was my third purchase in 30 days from this seller. I've not had occasion to be unhappy until now. I'll just put it down to thoughtlessness on his part and over optimism on mine. The stamps are already in mounts in my album, not ending them back at this point. I thought his reply to be a little flip.

I know another seller who sells year sets but he shows pics of all stamps in set and lists Scott numbers. I knew I was not getting them all.

I would think it was complete with the word "Set".
Sorry to hear that this happened.
Return them if possible.

I'm not sure that I would assume that the year was complete if the seller used "set". But, I'd prefer that he reference it as a "group of 1966", "selection", "partial set" or even "accumulation from 1966.".

Like Stamps1962, my expectation for "year set" would be "the stamps of that year", eg, all of them.

"1966 YEAR SET of 58 STAMPS" was an unfortunate choice.

"58x STAMPS, ALL FROM 1966" would have been better.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

When I buy a "year" or any other set, I check for the word COMPLETE and also use the catalog to check it.

Is there a tool to find all of the stamps for a given year / country ?
If I'm interested in 'everything from 1918', for example, how do I build that list?

I can read through a catalog, but need to remember that Scott might list BOB entries separately from the others, and Scott doesn't even show BOB issues for many countries.

Brent

I admit to not wanting to take 30 minutes with my Scott catalog, squinting at the image and seeing if all the stamps for that year were there. I'd bought from this guy before with no similar issues. His toss off reply made me delete from my watch list a few other items he has listed. It's his loss, although he doesn't know it.

This was not my worst experience buying these sort of sets. That award goes to a dealer in New York who has perhaps the largest website selling Russian material. I started buying year sets from him a few years back, after awhile I noticed none were complete. worse, a lot of that was due to stamps missing out of sets. A typical order would arrive with a set of 100 or so stamps supposed to be there but I'd only get 85 or so. In his case I doubt he was intentionally dishonest, I think it was just inattention. After a couple of complaints and his sending me missing stamps he cut me off. Good riddance.

Brent - Gibbons's area catalogues list issues (including officials and dues) in issue order (or they used to, at least), but, even then, something like a definitive series will usually be listed with a time span, so you'll have to look at the individual issue dates mentioned in the catalogue. You might try checking the web for specialist sites for particular countries. For example, this one lists French stamps on a year-by-year basis, although it separates air-mail, dues etc -

https://www.timbres-francais.net

Where it gets a little tough for me is when a given year includes some definitives that are part of a multi year issue.

Update, I decided to give the seller alluded to in the original post another go and bought two additional year sets of popular European country from him. I worked on them this evening. In one, he sent a short set of three stamps rather than the full set of six. On the other set he left out several items depicted in the listing; there were supposed to have been three sheets, none included. Two others he depicted totally missing. Sent him a message and awaiting reply.

It shouldn't be this difficult. So many sloppy sellers..

You already have issues with the seller yet continue to buy from him.

Sounds like a great match.

To me, a 'set' of anything means a complete set. Why else use such terms as 'short set'?